Recently, S. Anthony Iannarino over at The Sales Blog posted about LinkedIn (a Web service that facilitates business-oriented connections) and how it can help improve efficiency and thus boost sales. Since then, he's discovered some LinkedIn tools that he's been able to beneficially integrate into Outlook and Internet Explorer.

According to Iannarino, the latest upgrade for Outlook is an impressive one. Upon loading the software, it searches all of your archives (including .pst files, etc.) and looks for contacts to add to your database. Iannarino found almost 2,000 contacts and ended up adding a couple hundred of those to his contact database, which he then uploaded to his LinkedIn profile for later contact.

The new Dashboard also notifies you when you've been out of contact with someone for over 60 days; of course it can store anniversaries, birthdays and other events to remind you when to send a card or make that phone call.

It's interesting stuff. Check out LinkedIn for more information (account sign-up is free) and check out The Sales Blog's recent LinkedIn-related posts here and here.

Let us know how it works!